Physiological Psychology

The physiological approach to psychology focuses on our biological make up, and the events that occur in our bodies which cause our behaviour. Mainly, therefore, psychological psychology will focus on the brain, but it will also include study of the nervous system, hormones and genetics.

You should be able to:• describe and evaluate the physiological approach in psychology• describe and evaluate the various methodologies used to study physiological psychology• describe and evaluate the various issues and debates appropriate to physiological psychology• describe the physiological core studies in relation to methodology, approaches and perspectives, and issues and debates• evaluate the physiological core studies in relation to methodology, approaches and perspectives, and issues and debates

Evaluating an approach, using studies as evidence

A common question in Paper 1 is to evaluate the approach, using the studies you have covered as an example. E.g...

Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the physiological psychology approach using one of the studies listed below as an example. [10]

Dement and Kleitman

Dematté

Maguire

A very common mistake here is for students to simply evaluate the study itself (e.g. saying the strengths and weaknesses of the Maguire study). This does not answer the question. You need to use the studies as examples, in order to evaluate THE APPROACH!

Using the PEE structure can be very helpful here. For example:

P - Make a point about a strength or weakness of the approach (e.g. see the ones given below)E - Give and example from one of the four studies you have covered, which helps to illustrate your point.E - Explain why this is a good/bad thing for the approach.

Know your studies - Key details dustbin quiz

Strengths of the physiological approach

The approach has revealed that a number of areas of the brain have specific functions. For example, Maguire's study of taxi drivers shows that the hippocampus is crucial in memory of routes. This clearly has many useful applications for diagnosing and treating people who have problems after brain damage.

The approach is very scientific. It performs very carefully controlled experiments which are therefore likely to be replicable and produce reliable results.

The physiological approach can take advantage of sophisticated equipment such as PET and MRI scanners which provide an objective and precise way of measuring brain structures. For example in the Maguire et al. study the researchers were able to scan living brains using PET and MRI technology which enabled the researchers to gain lots of quantitative and objective data about the density of the grey matter of the hippocampus. Dematte used the olfactometer which enable strict control over the intensity of odors.

Weaknesses of the physiological approach

Even though this approach tries to be scientific, it is often impossible to directly observe the psychological processes we want to. For example, we cannot measure thoughts, so instead we have to measure things like blood flow. An increase in blood flow may not be the same as a change in thought processes.

Our limited ability to study brain processes directly and objectively means we often have to rely on self-report data, and so demand characteristics may be a problem. For example, in Dement and Kleitman’s study, subjects could have falsified reports about whether or not they were dreaming, or falsified the content of their dreams.

Studies carried out in the laboratory can be low in ecological validity. Dement and Kleitman had subjects spend the night in a sleep laboratory. We sleep differently when we are not in our own beds, and this certainly must have been the case since each subject was not only in a strange bed, but was wired up to an EEG machine, woken by a doorbell at intervals throughout the night and observed. Schacter and Singer injected participants to induce physiological arousal and this is clearly artificial and not a typical every day experience. Furthermore, the laboratory surroundings lacked ecological validity and the situation of experiencing unexplained physiological arousal is rare.

Revision

Test your knowledge

Extension

It is common to assume that as time goes on, the physiological approach will become more and more dominant in psychology as the technology to examine the inner workings of the brain and body becomes ever more sophisticated Perhaps this is true, but there is still a long way to go before physiological explanations alone are the best way of examining behaviour.

Unfortunately, we are often too quick to believe physiological explanations as the best ones. This effect is even stronger when explanations are called 'neuroscience' explanations. In fact, putting the word "neuro-" in front of almost anything makes people more likely to believe that it is effective (which is why you can buy 'brain-boosting water' and other rubbish these days.

Here is an interesting discussion of the topic from famous Neuroscience blogger Neurosceptic, discussing a paper which found that people were more likely to be convinced by made up arguments if they were accompanied by brain scans.